


Finding Luke

by foolhardy



Series: Finding Luke verse [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Daddy Vader, Drabble, Gen, Owen Lars saves the galaxy, Tatooine Slave Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-04 20:36:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11562867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolhardy/pseuds/foolhardy
Summary: When slavers take Luke his uncle Owen will take any risk to find him.





	Finding Luke

**Author's Note:**

> Beru is a part of the slave freedom network. Slavers find this offensive and attack, abducting young Luke. Owen is upset and tries to hunt down the slavers and also becomes a bounty hunter.
> 
> This is eight months later when Owen has lost most hope of tracing his nephew and is mostly out to kill slavers.

Imperial bounties were meant to be good, reliable work. This one had a particularly impressive figure attached so Owen went with some curiosity to the briefing room in the Imperial Cruiser. There was an impressive attendance which Owen had not expected, the Guild was never so formal as to have briefings - it was an Imperial affectation - and Owen had assumed that the demand would deter most of his fellow guild members. He was wrong the reliable nature of Imperial bounties apparently brought hunters by the dozen.

Carving out a little elbow room Owen took stock of the competition and promptly decided that he wasn't interested in being part of this. Every hunter knew that sabotage of others on the same trail - or not - was part of the job. It kept them sharp. But these people he had no interest in tangling with, he recognised several from awed descriptions of amour or helm or face. They are out of his league big time bounty hunters. So Owen settled in to listen to the strange formal briefing by the neat Imperial officer.

Rather bored Owen was grateful that the officer seemed to be winding down. He was considering pushing to the entrance when that door slid open and every Imperial officer came to ridged attention. Owen considered that if you could trick them into thinking a superior was on deck they would all be very easy targets. Around him the bounty hunters' attention shifted to the door and Owen looked too. He froze. Painful hope bubbled in his gut. Anakin.

Surely the second most powerful person in the Empire could help get Luke back? But Owen damped down the hope. Luke was put with them because Anakin was unable to look after the boy because he was a 'sith' which was not good for child rearing. He knew very little of his step-brother. Owen distinctly remembered the overpowering grief. And the fury. He also remembered the feel of the boy light and squirming and so very precious. How Old Ben had told them that Anakin was going by Vader now, how very sad the man had seemed and told them that the boy's mother was dead. Old Ben's voice telling him that the boy was Anakin's and how grateful he was to have a child to share with Beru. So very grateful.

As Owen struggled every awful rumour about Vader pressed into his throat. All the horrific things he had heard these last months in the dregs of the galaxy and the way even these scum were frightened of Vader. It all pressed on him and Owen didn't know what he could say only that he must say "Ani." The familiar name dried in his throat. His mother-Shmi's freed son Ani, she had always told them stories of him. His kindness. Courage. Drive.

In the wet centers of his bones Owen felt Vader turn his attention onto him. The crowd of bounty hunters seemed to fall away without moving their feet. Owen was looking straight into the black glass eyes of his remaining family. He had forgotten Anakin's gaze. How it had pinned and pulled at one. And in that long moment Owen wondered if Anakin even remembered the step-brother he had met once. But no. Owen could hear the wretched sobbing in his memory. Vader would remember Owen, but not with any fondness.

The brightly lit deck seemed to dim without any change in the quality of light. "Owen Lars," Vader's rumbling baritone was not what he remembered Anakin's voice as, "bounty hunting now." It was hardly a question and defiantly skipped any Tatoo etiquette - not that Owen felt that here before the staring Imperials and hunters was the place for formal reunion words. But Owen had purpose and he would take it.

"For eight months now. Since slavers took my nephew." He paused wondering frantically if that was enough information without telling this crowd anything Vader would not want known. Surely Vader remembered that neither Owen nor Beru had had any other family? What else could he say, Luke was missing for eight standard months and Owen had not been able to trace him and Owen protected whatever reason no one knew Vader had family. What else was there but to offer but "feel like hunting down slavers and slaughtering the scum?" and finish that promise you made to mother-Shmi.

The hunters around him all took a step or two away before the tension in the room froze them. It tightened and held and Owen firmly held his hope down. And.

"Did you have a particular destination in mind?"

Owen's grin had teeth in it.

**Author's Note:**

> As always feel free to expand on, adapt, or otherwise use any ideas you find in this work.


End file.
